Tag: Alaska

Beauty Point Retirement Resort now has an accredited Exercise Physiologist (AEP) called Veronica Mina who’ll be seeing clients every Thursday at the resort. Exercise physiology is beneficial for all types of physical ailments and it’s recently been added to the Medicare Benefits Schedule (MBS).

Because exercise physiology is now on the MBS, this means your visits to Veronica will be covered by Medicare. However, there are some conditions which apply so to find out more about this, refer to our detailed information at the end of this story.

You may not have heard about exercise physiologists much before. The fact is, exercise physiologists are experts in prescribing the right exercise to help you prevent and manage your chronic disease, helping you recover faster from surgery or an injury and at the same time helping you maintain a healthy lifestyle. Veronica will be doing her individual sessions in the gym and she may use the pool as well for hydrotherapy.

What makes an Exercise Physiologist different?
If you’re wondering what makes an Accredited Exercise Physiologist different to other exercise professionals, here’s a list of facts to help you out:
• Exercise Physiologists are university qualified.
• They’re eligible to register with Medicare Australia, the Department of Veterans’ Affairs and WorkCover and are recognised by most private health insurers.
• They can treat and work with all people. From those who want to improve their health and well being to those with, or at risk of developing, a chronic illness.
• Over the past 10 years, the rate of GP referrals to exercise physiologists for exercise programs has quadrupled in Australia.
• Just over half of the referrals for patients were made under a chronic disease management Medicare item number.

What can Veronica do for you?
Veronica recently visited the Beauty Point Retirement Resort and talked to a room full of interested residents. Her main message was: “Exercise is the best, cheapest, most accessible medicine available.”

She added many people can be living with a chronic condition or injury and they don’t know how to manage it: “You could have a chronic condition such as Diabetes, hypertension or arthritis, but you don’t know there are simple exercises you can do to help you manage it.”

Veronica continued, saying: “An accredited Exercise Physiologist can prescribe you the right exercise to help you recover faster from surgery or an injury.”

By doing exercise physiology sessions with Veronica, she said it’s possible to prevent or manage chronic disease or injury and assist in restoring one’s optimal physical function, health or wellness.

Veronica added that exercise physiologists use evidence based research in all their prevention and management of chronic disease, injury and disability exercise prescriptions.

More about Veronica:
Veronica is an Accredited Exercise Physiologist and an accredited member with Exercise Science and Sport Science Australia Organisation (ESSA).
She has a Bachelor of Health Science (Sport and Exercise Science) and Honours in Neurophysiology of ACL injury to prevent knee reconstruction from the Western University of Sydney.

Veronica also holds her Masters of Clinical Exercise Physiology from Charles Sturt University and she’s currently completing her PhD in Knee Osteoarthritis.
She currently works as an Accredited Exercise Physiologist at Mega Therapy, a private clinical practice in Sylvania. She has also worked at Waratah Private Hospital in Hurstville.

What are the costs when you see Veronica?
• One on One session with clients in the gym for $80 for one hour
• Group Session in the gym for one hour covered by health fund (No gap)
• Group Session in the hydrotherapy pool for one hour for covered by health fund (No gap)

To be able to take part in a Group Session, you will need to see Veronica for an initial personal consultation so she can see what you need to work on and what type of exercise will be beneficial to you.

During your initial personal consultation, Veronica will ask you questions about your current health and history; carry out a comprehensive assessment; develop your individualised exercise plan; set goals and a plan of action; and then give you an exercise prescription program.

What’s covered under your Medicare & Private Health Cover?
For one-on-one sessions for one hour, the price is $80 and you may be entitled to rebate from your private heath fund. Under Medicare, you’ll be covered if you have a doctors’ referral but there is a gap of $45. Additionally, the doctors’ referral only covers you for five sessions per year with either an Exercise Physiologist, a Physiotherapist or a Podiatrist.

If you have a half hour one-on-one session with Veronica, this is all covered by Medicare but the same limitation of five visits per doctors’ referral remains.
For Group Sessions, the full amount can be claimed under Medicare if you have been diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes. Group Sessions can be claimed under your private health fund and there’s no gap.

Kevin Dennes, a resident of Beauty Point Retirement Resort since late last year, recently presented some of the amazing photos he took when he led a group of photographers on a tour of Africa in 2014. A couple of months later, Kevin showed some of his best photos from a tour of the Antarctic in 2011.

So for anyone who missed these wonderful presentations, here’s a selection of some of Kevin’s best photos from these presentations.

Kevin has been a professional photographer since he was 18 and for most of his life, he worked in the medical and scientific field, developing some photographic techniques that are still used to this day. But on the more personal side, he says: “My own particular interest was travelling to and taking photos in Africa, in the Antarctic, the Arctic – and the bears in Alaska.”

“I’ve done a tremendous amount of travel – most of it paid by someone else,” Kevin adds. “I’ve traveled and photographed on the seven continents and it’s been a wonderful experience for me.”

At one time, Kevin worked for National Geographic but most of the photography he did for them was used for research material. During the time he worked with National Geographic, he says the company did a lot of photography purely for research purposes and these photos weren’t for use in the magazine etc.

Assignment in Namibia

“In 1978 I had my first assignment doing lion research photography in Namibia at the Etosha Lion Research Institute which was a wholly-owned National Geographic project,” says Kevin. “It was in the Etosha Pan – right up near the Angolan border. The zebra and wildebeest and a great range of antelopes would migrate over the Angola border in their annual migration in search of greener pastures and they’d get shot for meat and trophies, which raised a huge amount of money for those organising the trophy hunts.

“In order to slow some of this migration down, they put spear points down to reach the water table and this way the windmills would keep water permanently in the water holes. It saved a large amount of the lions, leopards and other cats by having permanent prey down at the Etosha Pan. They won’t migrate if there is plenty of food for them,” he said.

In July and August of 2014, Kevin took four groups of photographers to Africa on a various tours. “Africa is an extremely large continent and most of the photography I’ve done there has been in Eastern and Southern Africa,” he adds.

“Here is an olive bee-eater which flies very quickly and this was a very difficult shot to get,” says Kevin. “It takes an absolute fraction of a second to get this just right – to get the wings in exactly the right position” he adds. This photo was taken in Kenya.This is a photo of a tawny eagle with a spitting cobra that he’s just caught. “Photographers worldwide would give a lot to have been there in order to get this shot,” says Kevin. “You’ve got to be very lucky to get a shot like this. I would trade a lot of other shots I’ve taken to get this one of the eagle – to get the wings in just the right position and the snake is obviously still alive. You might go back 1000 times to the same spot and not get a chance to get a shot like this again,” he adds.

Here we see two Walruses as they gaze at the camera. Kevin says they are part of a group of Walruses and they gather in herds to protect themselves from the polar bears. “Most walruses weigh over a tonne,” adds Kevin.This is a stunning photo of a polar bear looking right at the camera. Kevin says if he was on the ice, seeing a polar bear up this close would be extremely dangerous – “You would die!” Luckily, he took this photo from the ship and he would have been around five metres from the bear. Kevin says he likes this photo because the bear is “looking straight at me.”

Here we have a six-metre long Nile crocodile attacking a wildebeest as the herd tries to cross the Mara River in Kenya. According to Kevin, the crocodiles know the wildebeest and zebras will need to cross the river at certain times of the year so they wait for them. The wildebeest have to cross the river in order to get to areas where it’s rained and there’s more feed. The wildebeest and zebras do this migratory trek at certain times of the year. As you can imagine, this was a difficult shot to get and Kevin adds: “I had to wait about six hours to get this shot. I know how the system works. If you see a herd of wildebeest you know they will cross at some time that day – particularly if the zebras come and join near them.”

Here we see a grizzly bear eating wild salmon at Brooks Fall at Katmai National Park in south-west Alaska. Kevin says he had to fly for four hours by light plane, land on a lake and then hike to this spot to take this photograph. “This has to be one of the most photographed places ever of grizzlies catching salmon,” Keven says. “Remember the John West ad where the guy goes out and catches one of the salmon jumping upstream? Well that was all filmed here,” he adds. “Millions of fish jump as they struggle their way back to where they were born three years previously. The bears each have their own spot where they catch fish from and they’ll fight to the death to protect their spot. So it was a very difficult shot to get. I took about 2000 shots before I got two or three shots of this sort of quality. You’ve just got to keep shooting!”Here we see a magnificent large male leopard lounging in a tree in Tanzania. Kevin took this photo while on the photographic tour of Africa in 2014.